


Sharing Sotries and Passing Letters

by mageofmind (renegadeartist), timeisweird



Series: so you aren't as human as you thought you were [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chameleon Arch, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, One Shot Collection, Tups AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-08-19 03:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16526411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renegadeartist/pseuds/mageofmind, https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeisweird/pseuds/timeisweird
Summary: A collection of stories from a universe unlike your own, or one you'd be familiar with. Extensive effort was put into making this as complicated as possible.(an assortment of one shots from the tupperware au. tread carefully while here.)





	1. Talking Heads

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [so you aren't as human as you thought you were](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15208397) by [timeisweird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeisweird/pseuds/timeisweird). 



> title from [The Whole World and You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-ZUo62N7Kc) by Tally Hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's familiar with the eda scarlet empress you'll get where the inspiration for this story came from. If not thats fine too its not necessary to understand this oneshot. I love John T Smith and he deserves none of this but we do it to him anyways.
> 
> set ambiguously post coma (after chapter six in the main fic)

It’s not quite physical exhaustion, because his body feels like it could run a marathon. It’s mental, because he, the thing that floats, disjointed and cracked in his head that calls itself John Smith, is stretched so thin that he doesn’t think he would be able to focus if he wanted to. 

So, he sleeps.

And his dreams (he’s still human enough to dream) are full of figures and fog, a snowstorm of white noise, red grass that tickles his arm and twin suns that burn overhead. There is rustling in the field and he raises an arm to fend off the bright rays, but–

Things twist and turn, kaleidoscopic and chaotic. A cathedral full of candles and smoke is bathed in shadows that move. There are figures just darker than the rest of it, leaning down, looking at him. He gets the feeling that he’s being judged, in a way wholly biased and unfair, and on measurements he doesn’t know and never will and never can. Words flow, chitter, chatter, and he catches snippets, which are really nothing more than bluster and nonsense.

With a jolt he realizes that they’re not figures. Not really. What he thought were bodies are stakes. The heads are real enough, but not connected to anything. They balance on the stakes and their jaws click open and shut in impossible ways. They are situated in a circle like a clock, and there are only two hours missing. 

A shadow lurks, and he feels himself fall.

-

He jerks, head shooting up, and now things feel much too real, but not quite enough for him to believe it is. His vision blurs just enough at the corners, and things are overwhelming but not as much as usual. 

There’s a girl with blonde hair standing in front of him who says a name that crackles in static and, “-what’s wrong?” 

He blinks. Takes a step back. It feels slow, disconnected, but it’s not something he can escape from. He feels shackled to this moment. “What?” he manages. The only comfort in this moment is that his voice still sounds like his own.    


“You’re- are you alright? You look terrified.” 

She’s too close, and he wants to lean back. But in moving he realizes that there’s something around him. Something he can’t see, that dissolves in static and really doesn’t look like much at all. He realizes, with a sudden jerk, that she is the  _ only  _ thing he can see. Oh, she’s starting to look nervous. That’s not good. “I’m fine,” he tries for reassurance. He thinks he probably fails. 

For some reason, this person he doesn’t know is very important, in the distant, dull gunmetal grey way  _ important _ things are. Except she’s bathed in gold, and it makes his teeth ache.

“You are  _ not,”  _ she says with conviction. She grabs his hand, and there’s a shock to his system. A spark runs through every nerve and he feels acutely that he  _ shouldn’t be here.  _ There’s something like confusion in the back of his mind that doesn’t belong to him. “Come on, when’s the last time you ate? Or slept, for that matter. You’re even worse than the other one.” 

He can’t resist her, can’t move his limbs right, so she drags him through the field of static. He hopes she knows where she’s going. “I’m fine,” his mouth says. “Don’t need as much sleep as you. You know.” He waves a hand, and it’s even more distant than before. Like the connection is fizzing out. “Superior alien biology and all that.” 

The words taste unfamiliar, the movement is strange and languid, confident and self deprecating. Not nearly enough to burn the energy that vibrates under his skin. There is something  _ wrong. _

“What do you mean?” she asks, and he realizes with a start that he said that out loud.

There is a sort of panic in his head, layered twice over, hitting against itself and doubling even more. He’s seen his reflection in the mirror and not recognized it. He asks, “Who are you?”

And she looks at him like he’s grown a third heart. “What? I’m Rose. ——, what’s wrong?”

That word again. It pushes against him. Burns his hands. He can’t hold on. “I’m- I’m not-” not what?

_ I am. _

_ Maybe. But  _ I’m  _ not _ .

There’s a sudden pinch, a pull, and something  _ rips _ him out of the static, away from Rose, who stares with bewilderment at something that isn’t and has never been human, something with shadows layered over and over and over, something that-

He wakes up in a cold sweat, and he can’t remember a single thing about his dreams.


	2. Cats!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written by timeisweird
> 
> set sometime post telepathy reveal (chapter 20 in the main fic)
> 
> also i've never read warrior cats but apparently all my friends have so i couldn't resist making some references. have fun with that.

Donna isn't a fan of cats. The videos on the internet are cute, yeah, but if any one of those hairballs showed its face around her, it would have another thing coming. It might have something to do with her friend Veena, whose cat will not hesitate to claw at your legs if you get too close, or maybe it has to do with her severe allergies that leave her sneezing up a storm. Either way, cats? No thank you.  
  
But really, despite whatever flatmate arrangement they have regarding pets in the house, she should have been expecting to find John sitting in the living room, surrounded by at least five cats, when she came home from work that day. Because that's how her life works now.  
  
"What the hell is this?" she asks, letting her purse slide off of her shoulder and onto the nearby armchair.  
  
John looks up at her. "I made some friends!" he says, grinning. Two have managed to find a place to sit in his lap, while another one lays against his leg. A grey fluffy thing sits alone, watching her with its wide yellow eyes. One of them meows.   
  
"When did I say you could fill our apartment with cats?"   
  
He scratches at his head, playing nonchalant, and pets one of the cats in his lap with his free hand. "Uh, I'm pretty sure you've mentioned it a few times... Like, you said you thought cats were cute, so I thought, _hey, let's go get some cats._ I like cats," he adds unnecessarily.   
  
An orange tabby rubs against Donna's leg, and she leans down to push it away, wiping her hand on her trousers. Oh God, the dander. She could feel her eyes itching already.   
  
"Cats are cute," she says, "when they're on a screen and _not_ in my face. I thought you knew I was allergic!"  
  
"I…  know now," he says, having the courtesy to look at least slightly embarrassed. She spots another cat on the sofa, leisurely licking at its paw – a discovered sixth cat.  
  
"Where did you even find these?" she demands.   
  
"...Around."   
  
"Around _where?"_   
  
He hesitates.   
  
"Are these strays?" she asks suddenly. "John Smith, don't tell me these are strays shedding all this fur on my carpet floor."   
  
"They don't have anyone taking care of them!" he whines.   
  
"So take them to a shelter!" she retorts. Her sniffling takes a bit of the bite out of her words, but the point is getting across, she thinks.   
  
"They don't _want_ to go to the shelters,” he tells her. "It's cold, and scary, and the two-legs there don't feed them nearly as much as they ought to. I think that's a money issue more than anything, but–"  
  
"The... two-legs?" she asks.   
  
He gestures to himself and her. "Us. We're the two-legs." He looks over to the same grey fluffy thing that was giving her the evil eye and is now pawing at his leg. "Oh, right, and they don't understand how to pet them properly." Then, he gives the cat a gentle scratch on the cheek, which it leans into.  
  
"Excuse me?"   
  
He nods to the grey cat. "Concrete only likes cheek scratches."   
  
Donna blinks.   
  
There's a couple of things to unload here.   
  
One. He's named the cat Concrete.   
  
Two. He called people two-legs. She's not sure where he got that from, but she has the feeling she'll find the answer to that in:  
  
Three. He's acting like he's actually talked to the cats, and gotten their opinion on all of this.   
  
"One question," she starts.   
  
John nods encouragingly.   
  
"Can you talk to cats?"  
  
He raises an eyebrow, looking at her like _she's_ the weird one. "No one can talk to cats, Donna." And for a moment, she feels like everything's normal and fine, and that she actually doesn't have an alien cat-whisperer for a flatmate. But then he goes on. "Expecting cats to _talk_ would be ridiculous. Telepathic communication, on the other hand... That exists, apparently."   
  
Right. "So you can talk to cats."   
  
"...Yeah."   
  
"And the cats told you that they don't like the shelters."  
  
"Yep."   
  
"So you decided to bring a bunch of telepathic cats to our flat."   
  
"I think all cats are telepathic, actually." He glances down at one of the cats in his lap – the one with fur the color of aged parchment, who he's been petting for some time now. "Tawnyflake says yes."   
  
"...Tawnyflake?"   
  
"That's her name, yeah. They all named themselves." He points to the other cat in his lap. "This is Noodle." Then he twists around to point out the rest of the cats and their names.  
  
The orange tabby's name is Bramblepelt, the one on the couch is Mocha, and the cat next to John's leg is... Schnugglibuts.  
  
"All the names are wonky telepathic names, I'm just roughly translating them," he explains. "Schnugglibuts is a odd case. Either his name doesn't translate to English well, or he just prefers German." John shrugs.   
  
There's a long pause in which Donna processes everything.   
  
"We're not keeping the cats," she says eventually.   
  
"But Donna–"   
  
"No, no, we aren't," she says again, more emphatic this time. "Because my eyes are itching so much I want to scratch them out, but I can't because I already touched Bramblepelt or whatever, and those allergy drugs don't work at all, so the cats have got to go."   
  
"No, no, no," he says, and she's surprised that he doesn't look upset. She'd expect him to be at least pouting. "They're not going to stay with us. I mean, yes, I'm going to be taking care of them, but do you think they'd want to give up the streets of London for some flat on the fourth floor of a dingy complex?"   
  
She crosses her arms, so that she can give off a stern look, and so that she can tuck her hands underneath her armpits, to remind her to not even _think_ about touching her face. "You're the cat telepath, you tell me."  
  
He grins. "Well, they don't. And I wasn't planning on keeping any cats here anyway, even if I didn't... know about your allergy thing. But they do like having a two-leg around that knows what he's doing – that's me," he says, as if she couldn't have guessed that herself. "So we've come up with a compromise. They can hang out on the fire escape, and I'll feed them and pet them, make sure they're healthy and everything, and then they can go off and do whatever it is cats do, I guess."   
  
It... does sound like a good plan, she has to say. Better than living with six cats.   
  
"Why don't you ask the cats what they do?" she asks.   
  
He leans in. "They won't tell me," he says in a stage whisper. "I think it's supposed to be a big cat secret. Not... big cat secret as in, lions and panthers and things, but like a big secret, held by these cats."   
  
"Right..."   
  
Yeah, she really should have expected something like this today. She's best friends with _John Smith,_ of course she’s going to come home to find he's going to befriend a bunch of secretive telepathic cats on his day off.   
  



	3. ambedo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written by timeisweird
> 
> content warning: dissociation, sensory overload, that sort of thing. 
> 
> set somewhere during the month long gap between chapter 20 and 21 in the main fic.

He’s not really sure how he ended up here; the start of the day was a blur, the middle of the day was a blur, and this particular instant is bleeding into the next and into the past, everything’s so muddled, he can’t keep track. He might have gone to class, he’s not sure. Probably not, judging by his reluctance to move. 

The space is cramped and he has to fold his legs up to his chest in order to fit at all – the closets in John’s flat were barely designed to hold basic things like bath towels and blankets, much less an entire person – but he makes do because it’s dark, the air’s warm, and the only thing he can hear is the whispers of the stars in his mind, as opposed to that  _ and e _ verything else. It’s still too much, but he can’t do anything about it. He just has to deal.

Not that he’s dealing very well; or maybe he is. After all, he hasn’t broken down yet. He’s still conscious, still vaguely aware enough to know how absolutely pathetic it feels to have to sit in a closet just so he can bare the discomfort of existence.

Muffled through the walls, he hears a door open and someone walk into the flat. It takes him a second to remember he doesn’t live alone anymore – Donna, then. That’ll be her. Home from… work? Maybe? He can’t find it in him to remember.

He draws his legs closer to himself, hugging himself tightly. It’s hard to recreate the pressure of a weighted blanket yourself, but he’s fairly sure the blanket is in the living room and he’s in a closet right now, so retrieving it will be an impossible task, then.

Everything’s just a bit too much and not enough at the same time. He’s a slip-knot on the verge of unraveling and being pulled too tight until it disappears all the same, and he really wishes everything would just  _ stop _ . Can’t it see that there’s someone on this damn planet who really isn’t very okay with the way things are going right now, but it’s not as if there’s anyone to listen or care so what’s even the –

“John, you home?” Donna calls out, and he cringes at the noise – immediately feels bad for cringing, guilty at the thought, but he can’t help it, her voice grates on his ears.

She walks through the flat, and he can very nearly tell what room she’s in from the minuscule echo of her steps and the volume and so many little factors that  _ burn _ . He holds his breath when she walks into the hallway his closet’s in, and internally, he’s wrestling with whether to alert her or not, whether to let her come to the conclusion that he’s left, that he’s at work, at class, anything but curled up in the back of some dingy closet.

She calls his name again, and maybe there’s something in her voice that tells him he can’t just. Let her think he’s not here.

It’s an effort he’d rather not make, but he does it anyway. Lifts his hand, just barely manages to tap against the closed door of the closet – unlocked, thankfully. He’s not sure if closets lock from the inside, actually. They probably don’t.

Donna stops walking, and there’s a pause. “John?” she says again, and oh, maybe this was a mistake. If she thinks he’s at class, then she won’t worry about him, and she worries so much, he knows this. 

Too late now, though. The hinges of the door grind imperceptibly as she twists the knob and opens the closet. John catches a flash of light from the hallway before he buries his head in his knees in an attempt to block it out – too much, too much, it’s all too much.  

“The hell are you doing in here?” she asks bluntly, very much not amused at the sight of her friend, but when he tries to make a noise (his voice catches and buzzes in his throat, and leaves him wordless) and fails, she catches on.

“Oh – Oh, John, are you–” she stammers, dropping to a whisper as she kneels down next to him. He catches a glimpse of her through a crack in the way his arms are folded, and he was right, she’s worried about him.

(Of course she is, you idiot. She’s always going to worry about you. You can’t fight that.)

She swallows, and settles on, “What can I do to help?” as if she already knows exactly what the issue is, which, she probably does. She’s a hell of a lot more perceptive than he is about these things, that’s for sure.

It doesn’t help that he doesn’t know. What she can do. If she can do anything at all. He might manage a shrug, but he certainly doesn’t say anything, doesn’t think he could manage anything sounding vaguely like language.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” is her next question, and this, he doesn’t know either. (What  _ does _ he know, ever?) It was bad when he was alone and it’s bad now, but maybe it’s less so. After all, she cares, she’s listening even if he isn’t saying much of anything. It’s apparent in the way she keeps her voice low and measured, how she’s speaking clearly, with sentences that aren’t too hard to process and digest, how she  _ knows _ by now what he needs when he gets like this. That’s plenty caring.

He opens his mouth, doesn’t take a breath (doesn’t  _ need _  to take a breath) to say, “No.” 

“Okay, I’ll stay here, then,” she says and means it. Then she’s shuffling herself around, sitting down properly instead of on the back of her calves, leaning back against the wall opposite of the open closet. She’s not close enough to touch, but he can hear her steady breathing, and somehow it helps.  
  
He’s thinking, maybe, shouldn’t she be bothered by this? Having to sit with her flatmate while he tries not to break down again, on the floor of the hallway, for God’s sake, doesn’t she have better things to do? Even  _ he  _ has better things to do than sit around being pathetically overwhelmed by nothing at all – but then she tells him, “If you need anything, just… let me know, yeah?” and he realizes that even if she does have other things to do, she’s  _ choosing _ to be here with him. And that helps a bit as well. 


	4. noisome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written by timeisweird.
> 
> set sometime during chapter 23 in the main fic.
> 
> drunk john is so good. he just love him friend.

It’s towards the end of the night – two in the morning, as John cheerfully tells her without her ever asking, but God, does she even care at this point? Can she care at all right now about whether she’s accurate or not in her description of how time has passed, when her best mate is sitting next to her, leaning his head on his shoulder because he’s much too tired to support himself and much too drunk to even attempt the task?

Short answer: No.

The long answer?

Well, she can think about that later.

John leans against her, and at this point, Donna’s weighing the possible benefits of keeping this whole thing going, and whether or not she should just call it a night (morning) and send him off to bed so she can try to piece everything together while desperately wishing she never had to.

Something pokes at her side, and she flinches far too badly. John doesn’t comment on that – if he even noticed, he still hasn’t lifted his head up – but he does drop his finger. “Hey – Donna,” he mumbles.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for being – y’know. All… here, and nice, and hazelnut.”

“Hazelnut? What does – what does that mean?” she asks, because if she hasn’t realized at this point that everything he says, no matter how nonsensical and incomprehensible, it has _some_ meaning, in someone’s head. Might not be her head, or even his, but everything has a significance, and if he’s saying she’s hazelnut, then she damn well needs to figure out what that _means._

God, she’s so tired.

Instead of giving her a straightforward answer, he says, “There’s this guy… the cashier, at the ASDA down on – the street, not this one, but the next one. By my – our flat. And he’s just. Awful. I can’t stand to be in that place anymore. Have you noticed – I never shop at that ASDA now. Tesco it is, I guess.”

She hasn’t noticed that, actually, but now that he mentions it… She still has no idea where he’s going with this.

John waves a hand limply in front of him. “He’s all… bleh. Bitter, and – and wrong, and the spirals around him just make my skin crawl.” A shiver goes down his spine, and it makes her feel ill. “Blurry and bitter and bristly. Three B’s, there we go.”

The spirals around him – the… timelines. She remembers him saying that, spiral cuts and swirls of timelines, golden-silver. “You don’t like his timeline,” she says, and something in her stirs at how easily that slips from her mouth. That’ll be the sleep deprivation, and the years of knowing a (now) alien who might not be who he (never) said he was.

“Yeah,” he says bluntly. He hasn’t taken a breath in a little while, and she only notices this when he does, a deep, slow inhale. “I like yours, though. Hazelnut, that’s what it’s like. But… burnt, just a little – not that it’s bad. I don’t _think_ it’s bad. It’s just… you. Y’know. Burnt hazelnut and weird distortions and sunshine.”

“Oh,” she breathes, and she's very certain that she's supposed to say  _thank you_ at this point, but she can't quite manage to get the words to leave her throat.


	5. camhanaich

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set sometime post ch 19 in the main fic, after john and donna have moved in together.
> 
> i love donna... she's SO good, honestly. she's not getting paid for this, but she definitely deserves a raise.

John’s flat doesn’t have a balcony, not like the one that she and Lance once shared. It was only, what, a month or so ago that they broke up? It feels like it’s been an age and no time at all since them, simultaneously. Donna’s not sure how to feel about that.

His flat may not have a balcony, but it does have a flat roof, and that’s where she finds herself this morning. The sun has barely begun to risen – you can’t see it over the buildings yet, but you certainly can see the rays of light as they begin to light up the sky. Blues like the deep ocean slowly mixing and bleeding into dark purples and pinks.

There’s a chill in the air, like always, and she’s glad she brought a mug of coffee to hold onto. The ceramic warms her hands as she clutches it tightly, and the coffee warms her even better. Smells pretty good too.

She’s got work in a few hours, but down in the streets below, cars can already be heard rushing to and fro; everyone has places to be, things to do, people to see. Not to say that the traffic ever _stopped._ Cities don’t sleep, and London is no exception to that rule.

John doesn’t sleep either – the bastard, he’s going to work himself to death. Right now, he’s down in the basement, writing some lab report for something that went up in way too much smoke and left Donna to fan out the flat as he rushed the vat of whatever it was outside. She doesn’t know why she let him do that in the kitchen that time. From now on, _all_ chemistry related nonsense stays in the basement, no special cases. And that includes mundane things like lab reports.

She sighs, leans forward, resting her arms against the cool concrete barrier that separates her from the drop below. She can deal with that later. For now, it’s just her, the sun peaking over the cityline, and the mug of coffee in her hands, and for now, she’s content with just that.


End file.
